How many Trump accusers does it take for his supporters to care?
It’s wholly unsurprising but entirely disgusting: the president of the United States yet again faces accusations of sexual assault. This time they come from the former model Amy Dorris, who says Donald Trump groped her and shoved his tongue down her throat at the US Open tennis tournament in 1997. She told her mother and a friend, and later a therapist, all of whom confirmed her story.
Dorris joins more than a dozen women who have accused the president of sexual assault, and the nearly 30 who have accused him of some sort of sexual misconduct. Many of the accusations are similar: Trump grabbing women, groping their breasts or genitals, forcing his face on to theirs for an invasive unwanted kiss.
And that MO – grabbing women and kissing them, grabbing their genitals – is also exactly what Trump has boasted about doing. “I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her,” he told Billy Bush in a now infamous 2005 recording. “You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful – I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”
We have a pile of credible accusations. We have an accused perpetrator who has admitted, on tape, to doing the very thing he is accused of. And yet we all know that the Amy Dorris story, like the many stories before it, will not result in any consequences for this predatory president. We know that the president’s supporters and enablers will fall back on a familiar playbook: deny it happened; blame the victim.
Trump’s lawyers are already going this route, telling the Guardian reporter who broke the story, Lucy Osborne, that Dorris’s claim is not credible because she still hung out in Trump’s vicinity after the assault, including sitting next to him. We know, of course, that Trump was a powerful man, and was close with Dorris’s then boyfriend. And we know that many women who are sexually assaulted feel confused or ashamed, and continue to be in contact with the men who assaulted them. We certainly know that sitting next to someone at an event is not evidence that no assault occurred. But we also know
that Dorris’s claims will be hand-waved away by Trump supporters, just like the dozens before. Already on social media, Trump fans are accusing her of lying.
In the meantime, Trump’s presidency is being bolstered by adherents to a far-right conspiracy theory who believe that Democrats and other elites are part of an international cabal of pedophiles. While they’re concerned about imaginary pedophiles gathering in the basement of a DC pizza restaurant, they shrug off dozens of credible sexual misconduct accusations against the man in the White House.
It’s a bizarre and troubling thing to see. Another woman has bared her soul and become a public figure overnight for her decision to be brave and speak out – one that will surely have consequences for her and her family – and it likely isn’t going to hurt Trump in the election. The people who believe the 20-plus other women who said Trump assaulted or harassed them are either already refusing to vote for the man or have decided they’re comfortable with a serial sexual assailant in the White House. And the people who don’t believe the nearly 30 women who have accused the president of sexual misconduct are not going to be swayed by another name on the list.
For women watching this all play out, it’s a sad, dark reminder that our words are not weighted as heavily as a man’s – especially if that man is powerful – and that wrongs perpetrated against us are often deemed unimportant, inconvenient, or unbelievable. That doesn’t mean it’s a pointless exercise for Dorris to tell her story; by contrast, it’s brave. Powerful men may often escape legal consequences for their bad acts, but they shouldn’t escape the social penalties that come with the truth. Women should not have to hide secrets that were never their burden to carry. It’s crucial to demand accountability, even if it never comes.
We know that the president’s supporters and enablers will fall back on a familiar playbook: deny it happened; blame the victim